It’s a strange bed, nearly as high off the ground as a table and much too soft. I sink into it with a feeling unpleasantly like drowning. I vaguely recognize this as the Jyashtani style, though why they can’t have a proper sleeping mat on the floor like normal people I can’t guess. There’s a light sheet pulled over me—silk, I note absently—and beneath it my clothes are gone, replaced by a kind of half-length robe. More foreign clothing.
My body hurts, especially my right arm. I’ve pushed my power too far before, and I recognize the sensation, the aftermath we call powerburn. The initial agony has faded into an itchy numbness on my skin, with deep aches stabbing down to the bone. When I breathe, pain pulses through my abdomen, where the crab’s claw almost crushed me.
The walls are metal, as is the floor underneath a threadbare carpet. I haven’t been magically transported off Soliton, then, more’s the pity. I take a deep breath and raise my head, stifling a groan. The room is small, not much more than the bed, with only a hanging curtain for a door.
“You’re awake,” Meroe says.
She’s sitting in the corner of the room on a metal stool. The bandage I put on her face is gone, and the wound the Butcher’s blow left there is covered by an ugly scab. There are circles under her eyes, almost black against her dark skin. She’s replaced the clothes she came aboard in with an ill-fitting green dress, sleeves rolled up to keep from flapping over her hands. Her palms are wound round with linen bandages.
“I’d rather not be,” I say honestly.
“I can understand that.”
She gets up and offers me a canteen. I take it, nearly fumbling the thing as pain spikes from my right hand. That was where I’d concentrated my power to kill the crab, and every movement aches atrociously.
“How are you feeling?” Meroe says, watching with concern.
“Alive.” I force myself to lift the canteen and drink. “Where are we?”
“A hospital run by someone named Sister Cadua. She has a lot of experience with powerburn, they say.”
In the past, when I’d overused my power, I’d had to suffer through the aftermath alone. On a ship full of mage-born, I suppose the problem would be a bit more common. Though a horrible thought occurs to me—
“She’s not a ghulwitch, is she?”
A shadow passes across Meroe’s face, and she shakes her head. “Just handy with a mushroom poultice.”
I let out a relieved breath. Having Kuon Naga’s ghulwitch messing around with my insides is enough for me for one lifetime.
“The others are more or less all right,” she goes on. “Ahdron needed some stitching up. The Butcher’s people took them back down to the pack cell, but I convinced them someone ought to stay here with you.”
“I’m surprised they care about me one way or the other.”
“I think the Butcher would have been happy to leave you to rot,” Meroe says. “But everyone’s been talking about what you did, so she couldn’t just ignore you.”
“What do you mean, what I did?”
“The thing you killed was called a blueshell,” Meroe says, grinning. “Apparently they’re pretty rare, and not the sort of thing people fight all by themselves, even Melos adepts. The story’s all over the place.”
“Wonderful.” I set the canteen aside, trying to figure this out. Having a reputation might help, but it’s only going to make the Butcher angrier. “How long has it been?”
“A day and a half.”
I groan, and pull myself to a sitting position. “You’ve been here the whole time?”
“More or less,” she says. “We’re still under guard, so I’m not allowed to wander around.”
“You should have let them take you back to your cell.”
“I didn’t want you to be alone when you woke up,” she says.
I give a sigh, which hurts. “You—”
“Besides, you’ve saved my life twice now,” Meroe says.
“Maybe you should be a little more careful with it,” I tell her. “What were you doing taunting that monster?”
“Getting it away from Berun, of course,” she says. “He was scared out of his mind, and it was coming right at him.”
“Berun is scared of everything.” I wince at another ripple of pain. “He’s useless.”
“Which means I should let him get eaten by crabs?”
“If you have to.” I shift awkwardly as she glares at me, and I try hard not to roll my eyes. Aristos. “Listen, Princess. You may have grown up in a happy fairy tale, but this is reality. You think Berun would jump in front of a crab to help you? He’d run for it, and more power to him.”
“Don’t talk about how I grew up like you know anything about me,” Meroe snaps. “You came and rescued me, didn’t you?”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“I have my reasons.” Even if I’m not quite sure what they are at the moment. “Don’t get the wrong idea about me.”
“What idea would that be?”
I grit my teeth. “That I’m a good person.”
She crosses her arms and sniffs. “Small chance of that.”
“What’s this?” a voice says from the doorway. “A lovers’ tiff?”
I tense up, and Meroe turns. The rag curtain parts, and a slim figure enters. The newcomer has an Imperial complexion, with a long, wild half head of hair dyed bright purple and flopped over the other, shaven half. A boy, I assume at first, but I quickly correct myself; she’s a woman, close to my own age, though with no chest and only the slightest of curves about the hips. She’s dressed in the colorful silk that seems so common on Soliton, and her broad grin has a touch of madness about it.
“Hello, fresh meat,” the newcomer says, without taking her eyes off me. “You’re Isoka, is that right?”
“I am,” I say, cautiously. “Who are you?”
“They call me Jack,” she says, with a shallow bow. “Wide-eyed Jack, Quick-Fingered Jack. Mad Jack, if they don’t fancy living much longer.”
“Do you work for the Butcher?”
Jack giggles. “I wouldn’t stoop to bowing to that oversized turd if I was reduced to begging in the street. No, I serve the most honorable Zarun, and gladly. He has heard of your exploits, you see, and wishes to buy you a drink.” She brushes past Meroe, leaning forward on the bed, a little too close to me. “Are you game?”
“We can’t leave,” Meroe says. “One of the Butcher’s people is keeping watch outside.”
Jack turns to her as though seeing her for the first time. “Was keeping watch,” she says. “Now I rather suspect he’s scuttled off with the purse I gave him to enjoy his good fortune. But may I ask who you’re supposed to be?”
“Meroe,” I say. “One of my pack mates. She’s new to the ship, too.”
“More fresh meat,” Jack says, licking her lips. “How delightful. She’s welcome to join us, of course. But hurry, hurry. Zarun gets so sad when he’s kept waiting.”
“What about the Butcher?” I say.
“Leave the Butcher to me,” Jack says. Her eyes are a bright sapphire blue, not a common color in the Empire. “What say you, Isoka, slayer of crabs? A drink?”
Options. As usual, not enough information. Zarun wants something, obviously. Going with her might anger the Butcher, but I think I’ve burned that bridge already. So what’s left to lose?”
I glance at Meroe. “I could use a drink.”
Jack bounces again and claps her hands, smile growing even wider. “Lovely. Let’s, then.”
* * *
I get dressed—my clothes have been cleaned but are still torn and ragged—and stretch, working out the residual ache of powerburn. Whoever Sister Cadua is, she does pretty good work, because I feel better than I’d expect to after that bad a fight. I join Meroe and Jack outside.
Jack leads the way, with an odd gait that’s halfway between walking and skipping. There’s another metal corridor with doorways on either side, and another curtain at one end. Jack hurries ahead, and I’m about to follow when Meroe grabs my elbow.
“Isoka, what are you doing?” she hisses.
“What does it look like?”
“She wants you to meet with Zarun,” she says. “You remember what he did when we came aboard? That little girl?”
“I’m not likely to forget.”
“Then maybe,” Meroe says, “this isn’t a person we should be getting friendly with.”
I pull my arm away from her, irritated. This is what I was worried about—I saved her life on a whim, and now she thinks we’re sworn companions.
“First of all,” I tell her, “it’s not we. I am going to meet with Zarun. You can do what you like.”
Meroe stares, as though I’d slapped her. Her expression tears at something in my chest, but I push the feeling down ruthlessly.
“Second,” I go on, “if you want to survive here, I promise you’re going to have to do a lot nastier things than have a drink with someone who chops off little girls’ heads. Zarun has power here. If I can use that to help myself, I will. I don’t care if he slaughters his way through an orphanage.”
For perhaps the first time in our acquaintance, Meroe seems at a loss for something to say. I give her my best nasty smile, and try to take some pleasure in the way she flinches.
“I’m just trying to stay alive, Princess,” I say. “You might want to think about doing the same.”